The Avtex Fibers Superfund site was a rayon-manufacturing complex covering 440 acres on the Shenandoah River in Front Royal. The fibers were used for parachutes in World War II and later to insulate the nozzles of rocket engines, including the solid rocket boosters that lifted the Space Shuttle into orbit. The facility was a major local employer operated by American Viscose between 1940-1963, FMC Corp. from 1963-1977, and finally by Avtex Fibers from 1977-89.

As part of the fiber production process, carbon disulfide, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB's), arsenic, and other wastes were deposited into unlined basins, landfills, and open piles. Effluent was discharged into the South Fork of the Shenandoah River under a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit, while groundwater was contaminated as much as 400 feet deep and hydrogen sulphide releases created a "rotten egg" smell in the area.

In the last five years of operations, the company fulfilled orders from Federal military and space agencies for viscose used to create a special version of rayon used in rocket engines, and ignored 2,000 State Water Control Board and court orders to reduce pollution or close.1

EPA designated Avtex as a National Priorities List site in 1986. Avtex briefly closed in 1988, re-opened after getting a new contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but eventually shut down the facility the day after the State Water Control Board revoked its water discharge permit in 1989.2

The company declared bankruptcy and quickly abandoned the site. It failed to protect its stockpile of carbon disulfide from conversion into a dangerous gas, and left $2 million worth of platinum and rhodium contained in rayon spinning jets.

location of Avtex Superfund site in Town of Front Royal
Source: ESRI, ArcGIS Online

Warren County seized the valuable metal and kept it in a jail cell, until bankruptcy courts determined how the material should be sold and the value distributed. The court awarded $20,000 to the county for storage, offsetting the loss of income loss from the inability to rent the cell to other jurisdictions. Virginia recovered its costs for cleanup in a settlement with FMC Corp. and the Federal government. The Federal government had rescued Avtex in 1988, and extended the years of pollution by awarding NASA and Air Force contracts to Avtex despite its record of repeated water pollution violations.3

The original plans to lease/sell old Avtex buildings that covered 30 acres of land failed, during the long legal maneuverings to determine responsibility for the cleanup and removal of asbestos/lead from the buildings. Avtex was a ghost town during most of the 1990's.

The Environmental Protection Agency identified FMC Corp. as a "potentially responsible party" for cleanup, and in 1999 that company accepted responsibility for completing the project. Final cleanup included tearing down nearly all of the old buildings, digging up over 10 miles of sewer pipe, hauling away 3000 drums, removing contaminated soil/fly ash or encapsulating it beneath clay caps, and using the site's old water treatment plant to process leachate before it reached the Shenandoah River. The American Viscose Administration building was repurposed as the site cleanup headquarters.

The Economic Development Authority of Front Royal and Warren County took ownership in 2000. The FMC Corp. site manager for the cleanup noted that the Avtex cleanup was unusual, since land ownership was transferred to local authorities for productive use as parkland or redevelopment:4

I've been in this industry for 21 years, and typically what happens at a Superfund site is when the cleanup is done, a fence is put up and once a year a groundwater sampling team comes in and samples the wells, they cut off the locks because they're rusty and they replace them with new ones when they leave and then they shut the gate.

In 2014, EPA notified the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority that the Federal role had been completed. The Superfund Redevelopment Initiative had succeeded in converting the Avtex site from unproductive waste isolation to a business park and recreation site. After 25 years of remediation costing $150 million, much of the site was suitable for new building, while 240 acres above the old disposal basins were designated for long-term protection to keep remaining contaminated soil undisturbed.5